The Telegraph’s assistant comment editor, Tom Chivers, has written a thought-provoking article about moderating comments on web sites. In it he tackles the apparent mismatch between a website advocating free speech while disallowing some comments under its articles:

It’s a funny thing. You write a piece saying that the state shouldn’t outlaw rudeness and insults, and about one comment in three underneath it says: “Aha! But Telegraph Blogs sometimes moderates/disallows comments! How about THAT, eh, hypocrites?”

But Chivers goes on to justify comment moderation:

The fact that our blogs are widely read does not mean that everyone has a right to be have a comment hosted on them, any more than the fact that our paper is widely read means that we have to publish every single letter we receive, even those written in green ink. We don’t check comments before they appear, but if a comment is “reported”, then our moderators will check it out, and if they feel it doesn’t meet our guidelines for any reason, they will remove it. Sometimes they will get it wrong, sometimes they will be inconsistent (they’re only human), and frequently you will disagree with their decision, but it is their – and by extension our – decision.

He ends by saying that readers have alternatives:

…of course we believe in your right to hold and express your opinions, and we (and I) have firmly said so on many occasions. But there is no contradiction between that and saying you should do it on your own territory, not ours. In fact, if I were feeling particularly aggressive about this, I’d point out that it’s a bit weird for all you Free Speech Campaigners to be insisting that you should get the right to decide what Telegraph Blogs has to say. Remember that: when you say something on our site, it’s us who host it, in our space. It’s not your free speech you’re exercising on these pages, it’s ours.
And if you don’t approve, you can go elsewhere, because this is a free society with a plurality of news outlets. We think we have a relatively light-touch approach to moderation, but you may disagree. This is not Pravda; there are other places, with different moderation policies. If none of them are to your liking either, then you can set up your own, and make it as untrammelled and Wild Westy as you like (within the bounds of the law, of course, but you can’t really blame us for that). And if readers prefer it, then they will flock to your unpoliced, unmoderated, uncensored people’s paradise. That’s how a free-market democracy works. Give it a try.

8 Comments

1984 is closer than we think. It is sad that we live in a supposedly free and democratic country and yet a man can be arrested for burning a poppy and posting it on the internet. Was it crass, offensive and thoughtless? Yes. But worthy of arrest? No.

As someone whose comments on this site are automatically subject to “moderation” and some of which never see the light of day, may I say that I agree (almost) with Tom Papworth?

It seems to me that “freedom of speech” includes the right (that’s the bit where I disagree with you , Tom) to express an opinion,within certain legal restraints, whether or not others may find that opinion controversial or even offensive. But it does not entitle one to an audience, it conveys no guarantee that others will listen and it does not compel anyone else to provide a platform or a medium for the publication of that opinion.

But, to be effective in practice as well as in theory, freedom of speech requires a diversity of media which is why we need to guard against,, and if possible reverse, the concentration of ownership and control of the mass media.

Chris: I notice the police force press notice has been expanded to include reference also to a possible offensive comment. As the police’s version of events is evolving and as we don’t know exactly what was in the photo (was it just a burning poppy?) or in any possible attached text comments, I think we should be cautious about drawing conclusions about this specific case. From the evidence so far, it seems to me the case could go either way – either being a case of police over-reaction or it turning out that the rest of the circumstances justified it. So far, we don’t know.

I prefer sites that exercise light-touch moderation, like the Telegraph where the onus is on the reader to ‘report’ comments for moderation as I think it helps to both ward off out-and-out abusive comments and flagrantly off topic contributions and provide a recognised means of deleting such contributions. This site (LibdemVoice) is another which exercises a slightly different approach by encouraging people to be polite and respectful – which seems to have a positive effect on people’s contributions.

I find sites where comments are moderated before being displayed (eg. ‘The Blue Blog’) irritating. to me the operators of such sites are frightened of debate, which gets confirmed when questioning comments don’t get approved.

As for Nick’s diversity of ownership – anyone can start their own blog and publish any damn thing they like. They can then publicise their blog with posts that won’t get deleted on places like the Telegraph comments pages, or elsewhere where a reader might potentially share their views. If they are any good, and not just regurgitating the drivel they read in the mainstream media, they will attract a following and influence events. If not, they will be rightly ignored.

Well, occasionally I get a message saying my comment on this site is awaiting moderation and it always puzzles me because I haven’t said anything rude or derogatory or used a dodgy word. I’m curious about how posts get selected for holding for moderation. I haven’t bothered to go back and see what happened to those posts.

Tom Chivers has a very important point because people often confuse editorial discretion with censorship, as in the controversy over the Danish newspaper cartoon of Mohammed. If the Danish government had prevented the paper from publishing the cartoon, that would have been censorship. If the editor had decided the cartoon was unduly offensive – that the nastiness was not adequately balanced by public interest – (s)he could have chosen not to publish the cartoon, a similar decision to those made all the time by editors. To say the editor made a mistake in approving the publication of the cartoon is not to advocate censorship.

Blogs blur the issue a bit because people expect them to be free without thinking deeply about what that means. Most blog readers and contributors would prefer to be protected against vicious trolls and moderation following complaint is a mild and light-touch way of doing this. What is cheap and mean is to pretend the site is a great exercise in free speech and then to suppress comments which, while perfectly legal and polite, are critical of the positions you want to promote – in other words, the Labour Party’s usual mode of operation.

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